Kind: captions
Language: en
in this episode with liz josephsburg we
discuss why there's a gap between action
and intention the habits that are
sabotaging your weight loss goals how to
break free from yo-yo dieting and how
technology is changing the health game
for the better
hey everybody welcome to health theory
today's guest is liz josephsberg she's a
weight loss industry expert and
celebrity diet coach who's probably most
famous for the unbelievable
transformation she helped oscar winner
jennifer hudson achieve and maintain and
her new book target 100 has been
endorsed by such luminary former clients
as charles barkley katie couric and
jessica simpson she's also appeared on a
gaggle of media outlets including good
morning america the dr oz show the oprah
winfrey show katie and the doctors but
what i find most interesting about your
approach is that it's so mental that
you're starting with getting people to
interrupt their patterns to create new
habits
why are you so heavy on the mind
you know i don't think that there's one
person
out there that doesn't know a better
food choice right you know an apple is a
smarter choice than a snickers bar there
is a giant
gap
between intention and action worked for
countless weight loss companies for
years and years and watched as people
were prescribed you know a food plan
where they
sort of just followed the food plan but
until something broke
and it just it was the same for me so i
was like i really want to understand
what's happening in people's minds and
why is it that they can stick to
something for a certain amount of time
but then it ends so as i kind of
rotated in my career away from you know
working in weight watchers and lifetime
fitness and some of these larger brands
into creating my own company and my own
philosophy
my first step was to understand
why do we do what we do because it isn't
that we don't know what the smart choice
is so i went about sort of really
looking into the brain science behind
you know why would say a woman come in
and i'd weigh her at weight watchers and
she would you know the funny thing that
happens before a woman weighs in is they
start just spewing and and almost like a
confessional they say oh i i had a
really good week until friday when i had
you know 37 points left and i ate 39
points and i felt so bad about it that i
ate 275 points and i was like wait you
ate two points over which wouldn't have
made you gain weight but the
something's happening in the brain
so
started to look into the research and it
turns out that any time that we feel
guilt or shame
about a food choice or an action it
actually activates the reward center in
the brain
meaning it makes us want to
um feed the reward center absolutely so
the one thing that you're trying to
craving is what it's kicking to have the
emotional reward yeah so when we look at
the brain under an mri when the feelings
of guilt or shame which so many diet
programs right they they
create these boundaries at which once
you cross that boundary you are somehow
bad you have somehow broken a line so
this is sort of back to that woman right
she she felt like she had done something
wrong she felt guilty and shameful so
that drove her brain into the reward
center lighting up and then she goes for
whatever it was that she was trying to
avoid so a gambler is going to gamble
more as they're losing right the um the
shopaholic is going to spend more money
and shop more as they feel more guilt
and more shame over what it is that
they're doing so my entire
philosophy and process was how do i
figure out how to move people away from
these feelings of you know there's a a
specific program that if they don't
stick to it perfectly they therefore are
bad they therefore have have broken
something and it's over right because
that was the process that i found myself
going through was i would lose weight
there was a finite ending to that maybe
i reached a weight goal or i or i did
something wrong where it broke down and
so i didn't just go back to like sort of
healthy eating i went back to the most
unhealthy eating there is in the world
right binge eating and overeating and
all of those things so and i was seeing
this
with so many people so i really felt
like i really wanted to start to make
people understand
how their brain is driving them and
remove some of those feelings of guilt
and shame and give them the tools and
the worksheets and the exercises that
would help them to unravel
their thought process around this and
where they picked up those ideas it's
really interesting to me and i think
this is what i found so fascinating
about target 100 the way you open the
book like first with your story which is
amazing and i definitely want to talk
about that and then
to your point like once people
understand that they've built this
unhealthy relationship with food then
they can actually get to the cause and
begin to unwind it yes and i heard you
say one time that you know i think
oftentimes people are surprised because
i have to come to them at the diet level
because that's what they expect that's
exactly right that's not where we're
going to stay i thought that was so
interesting that's exactly right right
like it's so funny you know i have to
come at them with
what resonates with what they can
understand at this moment but where i
take them is so deep and so much further
than what they've ever thought about
their relationship with food and i have
sort of a tagline of like i say i'm
going to return you to a normal
relationship with food we have a really
strange
relationship with food in this country i
think we've lost our way in many ways
i think dieting and you know all of
these sort of extremes that that have
have come in and come out um you know
going into a process and sort of
slavishly or following you know the
rules that somebody else has set out
that worked for them right i always say
for my clients i say like let's pretend
we're going to a hat store right if you
were going to buy yourself a hat you'd
try on a whole bunch of hats and if they
didn't look good you'd take them off and
you would pick up the pieces that kind
of looked good about that hat and you'd
go to the next one so i'm always
encouraging people to
not turn themselves over
use these programs they're amazing
you'll learn something from doing them
but don't beat yourself up if it isn't
your long-term
plan that you're going to stick to
completely which that's where i think
this thing gets set up for people is
they do one of these things you know
they go to weight watchers they stay on
it for four weeks or so and then when
they can't sustain it they feel like a
failure and those feelings drive them to
overeat
so
unraveling that is to try to look at
this process from a whole new lens and
that's what target 100 is a for me right
so i had to lead them in with i'm giving
you a parameter i'm giving you sort of a
a program to follow but if you read the
book it's based on the um image of me
playing uh doing archery with my sons
and i say i want you to go into target
100 and imagine you know when you go out
to to do archery you aim for the
bullseye right and i had never done it
before so here i am aiming i'm hitting
the house off to the left you know i
mean i'm not doing well at all but i did
hit a couple of the outer circles and it
was one of those moments where i was
like oh my gosh
this is this is how i want people to
approach
their their their dieting or their
moving through a lifestyle is that they
wouldn't if they if they got near it
near the bullseye they would still get
points so that's sort of the entire
ideology behind target 100 is
you know i ask you to
kind of limit yourself to about 100
grams of carbs a day and i always say
about because if you got 93 it'd be fine
and if you did 107 you'd be fine it's
when you say like oh gosh i missed this
perfect mark so i may as well just go
and eat and drink everything off on the
face of the planet so
what drives unraveling this which is
the most important thing for people to
hear is that
we are just a bundle of habit patterns
50 of what we do in a day is simply
habit
and habits are relegated to a back
portion of the brain where
honestly
we aren't even present when we're doing
them and we do that for a really
important reason right because if i had
to decide how to wash my hair every day
that would that would that would be
exhausting my decisions for later in the
day so so we have to love our habits but
if 50 of what we do in a day is habit
than 50 of the decisions we're making
about how we feed ourselves
you know when we do are we eating in the
car are we eating on the go are we you
know what are we how are we fueling our
bodies then 50 of that is just
kind of not we're not even present for
it and we're just being driven to these
sort of old easy patterns so we don't
have to think so in the book you break
down the anatomy of a habit that was
really cool walk people through quickly
that are watching now that might have a
tenuous or unhealthy relationship with
food they have habits that aren't taking
them where they want to go that may be
blind to those habits
how do they become aware and then more
importantly how do they create that new
pattern great so the anatomy of a habit
is simple right habits are just very
very simple they are made up of three
distinct
things that happen there is a trigger
or a cue of some sort that kicks that
routine off that kicks the habit off
that habit then gives you some sort of a
reward
so you may know that it would be best
for you to have a healthy breakfast
right and but your habit isn't that you
don't know that perhaps having a healthy
breakfast would be smart it's that your
bad habit is you wake up and use the
snooze bar three times in a row making
you you know
15 to 20 minutes late every single day
so you get up all sudden you're running
late you then skip breakfast all
together you're completely stressed out
you get in the car you get to the office
and there's a coffee cart with donuts
outside you say i'm just gonna get
coffee
but as humans anytime we see food smell
food or talk about food we're triggered
to eat it so you see the donut you don't
have any resolve at that moment because
you've been eating the doughnut
habitually for days but it also releases
a big fat dose of serotonin so you are
getting a real feel-good kind of thing
we back it up and we say like so why is
this happening okay let's take that
alarm clock this trigger is this
trigger's bad this this lateness is
triggering this this doughnut
let's move this alarm clock across the
room or stop using your phone as an
alarm clock and get an actual alarm
clock and put it across the room so you
have to get out of bed and let's stop
being late because that extra 10 15 20
minutes allows you to then go to the
kitchen where we trigger other things
right where i put post-it notes of like
okay today's breakfast is x y and z so
you don't have to think you just have to
start to create this new pattern once
you
do something about three to five times
it begins to become this
new fledgling habit and it's not as
painful i think in that anatomy of of
habits i think no one ever has talked
about the emotional
difficulty that ensues from changing a
habit as well i just i like to tell
people to be aware that there will be
so many emotions when you try to change
something that's so comfortable and you
don't have to think about you will be
mad you'll want to stomp your feet
you'll feel angry you'll feel sad you'll
feel you know all of this anxiety
it's just that your body wants so badly
to not have to think about these sort of
less than important decisions that it
feels very painful but if you will
repeat those things as i say three to
five times they become this fledgling
habit and you just need to sort of fan
the flames of that habit soon enough
that becomes the comfortable thing and
all of a sudden breakfast is knocked out
like all of a sudden you're like oh gosh
i've got the stuff in the house i'm
eating breakfast every day i'm not
getting over hungry i'm not eating the
doughnut that starts to lead to actual
weight loss that change of moving the
alarm clock across the room
one thing that i like that you talked
about is refusing excuses so i can hear
people like they're hearing the story
and it's like yeah i'm going to move the
alarm clock across the room no problem
and then something happens and they're
up late and it's like i just need to you
know snooze it a little bit and they
allow themselves the excuse of breaking
the habit which then immediately reverts
them back to the way that they were
behaving before how do you get people to
because you said you can train this how
do you get them to get better
at refusing excuses yeah well i think
probably as i said 50 of what we do in a
day is is
habit more importantly they estimate
that 80 percent of the thoughts we've
had we've had already it's it's recycled
thought that goes around and around and
around right and it's never positive we
don't have like happy good thoughts that
go round and round and round right it's
like this is never gonna work um you
know it's always the negative right so
one of the things i think is really
important is beginning
and one of the pillars in the book is
beginning to understand sort of stress
relief and meditation to be able to sort
of begin to clear those thoughts i was
shocked that you said that meditation is
your number one weight loss tip yes yes
most of the eating and over drinking in
the society that we live in now is due
to
literally being so stressed out and not
having control over those thoughts that
you were talking about right and
meditation allows us to be in the moment
to take the action whereas when we're
stuck in the 80
tornado we can't do anything i was
always a
person who would sneak eat right i
didn't want anyone to see me eating it
was a really bad habit and even when i
got married like i would like be like
i'll be right bring it right up honey
and then end up in the pantry like
sneaking some little bit of food because
i didn't want them to see me eating
right um
it's a bad pattern i've worked on it
i've eradicated it to like 95 right but
every once in a while i will just find
myself in there because burned into my
neural pathways is this old habit of
behavior they never fade away completely
they live there and that's okay it's
okay if i can eradicate it you know 80
to 95 percent i'm really going to be
able to live at a healthy weight but
when i
understand that it's still there and it
happens i don't need to feel guilty or
shameful but i just need to immediately
go back to right so if you hit that
snooze button the one day you're it's
not over you didn't do anything wrong
you didn't do anything bad it's just
that this pathway still lives there and
you want to go over and reiterate the
new pathway that you're working on i'd
really like to hear your story because
it's super powerful you open the book by
saying i don't think anybody knew the
words body shaming back in my elementary
school when i was growing up in the 80s
and i think it's really interesting that
you've been able to unwind that you said
that you were bullied mercilessly for
your weight and as a child of the 80s
there weren't a lot of heavy kids and so
when there was one they got targeted
pretty fast yeah so what was that like
and how on earth were you able to unwind
the narrative about being somebody who
is overweight yeah that that is
such an important piece of this because
you know whether we have
been shamed like i was out by outside
sources most of the people that i work
with are shaming themselves worse than
anyone outwardly has ever done i was
just literally again habitually putting
myself down based on what had been given
to me externally but what i was also
coming up with internally about me being
less than and less worthy and and ugly
fat all the things that that that i came
up with that became my identity that
became just a running narrative right it
was almost like
if you had a radio on in the background
and you just stopped noticing that you'd
left it on
that was just always going on and i
didn't even realize it was on i started
this book by giving you a program right
that you could understand that you could
stick to
that starts with looking at your
environment right it starts with you
being able to clear out your house of
some of these foods and starts so once
you once you
just do these things in your environment
level which it's really simple to to
kind of go through your environment say
like wow those ice cream bars they gotta
go because i'm not gonna do well for me
it's chardonnay you can't have
chardonnay in the house open bottle
chardonnay is not going to make it
through the night in my house that's a
trigger for me so i clean up my
environment and i start behaving
differently right once you change the
environment you begin to behave
differently once you behave differently
you start to actually feel like maybe
you
are capable of this you know as long as
i don't have the chardonnay wow i don't
drink it so i'm capable of keeping it
out of the house i and and that that
capability begins to make me believe in
myself just a little bit
and i go wow so
i i believe i could lose this weight i
believe i could be different
once you believe in yourself the very
final piece is the identity piece it's
at the kind of the core of that that
those levels of change
once you get to that identity piece
that's where the real work starts that's
the unraveling and that for me came
through you know learning to meditate
learning to quiet my brain learning to
understand the voices that i was telling
myself and i lost weight so many times
over the course of my life first it was
30 pounds about five different times
then that escalated to 50 then that
escalated to 65
when i realized my entire identity was
was a yo-yo dieter
i could lose the weight but i couldn't
keep it off is what i told myself and
once i heard
myself telling myself that then i could
begin the work to say like okay
what is it that's that i want to see
happen now but until you do that sort of
internal work
journaling you know meditating um
talking to to friends who've known you
for a very long time examining where you
picked up these ideas about yourself
this is going to persist
no that makes a lot of sense so going
back to as you're beginning to build
yourself out of this you talk about
people having the urge to quit whether
it's exercise or whether it's something
more long-term
how do we exercise that muscle how do we
begin to push farther to not give in to
that urge to quit and maybe most
importantly how do we begin to earn that
credibility that you talked about with
ourselves
well i'm a huge proponent of baby steps
and everything in my teaching and in my
philosophy is about going you know
just the tiniest bit further
than you did and then literally cheering
yourself on i think those two things are
under rated in this process how do you
cheer yourself on people ask me that
question all the time and i think it's
so yeah well i think it's this change
over into one of the big principles
additionally to kind of quieting guilt
and shame is that we now know that
gratitude and just the practice of
gratitude in when we look again at the
brain under an mri scan gratitude
releases serotonin and endorphins in the
level of almost like a low-level
antidepressant and so learning to kind
of practice gratitude and learning to be
proud of yourself and grateful um i make
people laugh because it is always for me
chardonnay and you know there have been
nights where i'm like you know what i'm
just
it was new year's eve a couple years ago
and i was like you know what i've had
enough this has been a december to
remember i need to like cap it tonight
it's new year's eve you know i'm just
gonna wait at like eight i'm gonna have
a couple glasses of wine tonight but
it's just gonna be it's gonna be a
low-key night so friend invited us over
for a brunch we literally knock on the
door and she opens the door and she's
holding mimosas at noon and i was like
well this wasn't in the plan
and you know i made the conscious
decision that i was going to enjoy the
mimosa that she handed me um number one
i was aware of it i made the decision
right i was there
i enjoyed that and then i ended up
drinking probably four more drinks
throughout the rest of the day so it did
not hit my target the old me when i
opened my eyes that next morning the old
me would have literally been berating
how did you you said you weren't going
to do that you're a loser you're this
you're that
before i even open my eyes i feel like
there's a 40
100 pound weight on my chest because i'm
now just a bad person
the new me literally i opened my eyes
and i was like
at least it was five drinks and not six
love you girl you did good you drank
some water too you're awesome
waking up like that
versus waking up with that weight on you
allowed me to then
sort of skyrocket into that next day
it's being
it's so counter-intuitive in the diet
world it's all about beating yourself up
and shaming yourself and you're not good
enough and you didn't do well enough i
want you to to literally be grateful and
appreciative and and nourish every good
choice that you make and let go of the
bad ones because when we focus on that
negative when we just keep um
berating ourselves we can't go anywhere
we're stuck
i think people are afraid to do that
because they think i've got to kick the
horse harder to make it run faster
it's the absolute opposite so it isn't
that you didn't know that this was a
healthier meal you got to the restaurant
you're like i don't know cheeseburger or
salad i'm not sure which one
no but can you be like can you use these
new skills of planning a little bit
before you get there can you begin to
understand that there will be urges like
you were asking about this this urge to
quit right
urges
they they happen for us all day long not
just with food with all sorts of things
what i think has happened in this really
rough environment that we live in is
we've stopped
you know understanding how to reduce
these urges towards food and i think
another thing i would love for people to
hear
is that just as human beings every time
we see food smell food or talk about
food we are driven to eat it we have
this sort of secondary hunger system
that kicks in and when we see it even if
we just ate a meal our bodies are going
to make us actually feel hunger
symptoms
mouth-watering stomach grumbling you
know it's probably happened to every
single person who's gone to a restaurant
and overeating a little bit and said oh
can't eat another bite until they bring
that dessert card around and all of a
sudden you're like i got a second
stomach where'd i get the second stomach
i love it so
we are prehistoric in that when we see
food smell food or talk about food we
can eat more food so
understanding that and understanding the
environment we live in right so if
you're going to go now to any sort of
clothing store they didn't use to sell
food in clothing stores but they sell
food in clothing stores now because they
know that by making you walk through
that maze
as you wait to pay for your purchases
and get more stressed out by your
children asking you can i have can i
have
you're going to
be driven to eat that food and they're
going to make money off of you buying
those foods at the checkout that they're
not even making on the clothes the
margin is better on the food for them
because that food can sit there until
2027 and the clothes are out of style in
six months so
they they know what they're doing if you
can start to navigate this very
dangerous environment that we live in
and say like okay i understand that i'm
staring at a candy bar so of course my
mouth is gonna water that doesn't mean i
have to eat it
once you understand your physiology and
your phys physical response to just the
seeing of food you can begin to navigate
and control those urges a little bit
more
i think urges as well the one place and
the the chapter that it seems to really
just blow people away is that my i'm a
personal trainer i've you know spent
years exercising
i want you exercising because that's the
one place where you finally practice day
in and day out you practice pushing
through the urge to quit
because there will be a moment in your
exercise where you're like
there might be a moment before where
you're putting on the shoes or like i
don't have time you're gonna have all
this mental junk come up at some point
whether it's before during or after
you're gonna have to deal with some sort
of urge to not do what you're doing i
love in the book how you talk about that
exercise is really about exercising the
mind even more than it is about
exercising the body i think that's so
astute and i think that people really
um miss that a lot and going back to the
notion of earning credibility with
yourself what does that process look
like yeah we are all day making promises
to other people right i have children
and
you know if i tell my child that we're
going to i'm going to show up for them
you have to believe i would literally
walk across fire like i would walk
across fire for that child but what i
realized was i wasn't ever doing the
same loving thing back to myself
i had become completely disposable i was
you know making a promise and then
breaking that promise to myself which
made me
not trust or love myself because would
you trust or love an external person who
continually broke their promises to to
you
so
establishing integrity with yourself
becomes probably one of the greatest
things you will ever do you're going to
gain life skills that that make your
work better and your family life better
and your love life better because once
you can look at yourself in the mirror
and say i
do what i say i'm going to do for me
in that vein i think establishing
integrity with self goes back to that
baby steps principle right i think
really saying okay i want to establish
i'm going to exercise more this year i
think that that's a giant statement that
no one can even quantify right what does
that mean i think you have to go to a
very micro level with yourself and say
like okay i haven't exercised in two
years
i don't even have a gym membership
i don't have shoes i don't know where i
would go i think week one you don't set
foot in the gym week one it's you the
only promise you make is that you're
going to spend 30 minutes to an hour
calling your friends to say where do you
go what do you like put it out on
facebook i don't know put it on
instagram i'm looking for
ideas and whatever lands with you next
week
you have to book a class and get your
clothes
for the following week so it's just
booking that class and getting the
clothes week two so you can you can
actually achieve this someone who just
says i'm gonna work out and has to
figure out where they're going buy shoes
do this do they're never going to do
it's not realistic it's never going to
happen so back it up break it down into
manageable chunks that you can keep the
promise
so as people are going down this road um
i know for a lot of people can be very
overwhelming especially with diet what
should i eat what shouldn't i eat um you
have a pretty
simple straightforward way for people to
begin to make good choices going back to
that notion of it's better to be sort of
directionally correct you're still
getting some points rather than you know
just uh throwing it all to the wind and
i don't know what i'm doing and so you
just don't make any effort
how can people begin to plan out their
meals yeah what i discovered after
working with so many thousands of people
is we basically eat the same thing over
and over and over again
and i have a worksheet in the nutrition
chapter that literally is called the 555
worksheet and it's what i do with a
client a private client i sit down on
that first meeting and we go through
like five healthy breakfasts that they
like not that i like not that came from
some other person but that they would
actually eat you know maybe they hate
eggs but i love eggs so we're not gonna
put eggs on your meal plan so we go
through and we designate five breakfast
five lunches and five dinners and five
snacks that
we know are really good choices but they
also really like so if you've designated
these meals and you have things on hand
that will
you know get make making those meals
easy you always know
you're kind of sad
my program is meant to be
the a moderate
loving gentle
um
expandable program because i know about
all of that junk that's going to happen
in their head i'm trying to get them to
a place where it doesn't need to be so
hard like i don't want to count four
numbers to divide by 10 to get another
number i think simplicity and
understanding that we're very habitual
creatures
understanding and leveraging the habit
patterns that we were talking about
leverage your hat don't don't hate your
habits don't be mad at your habit
create new ones and leverage it so
there's sort of a moat around your
castle like you just kind of wake up and
you make one of these great five healthy
breakfasts and you don't even think
about it anymore i always call it the
beginning of your healthy meal
repertoire because we're just going to
add to it right so your friend calls and
says let's go out for mexican and you're
like oh god oh god what am i going to do
how am i going to do this and you kind
of do a little bit of research and you
realize that you know what i'm going to
get the fajitas i'm just going to eat
one tortilla and get the rest of it over
salad i'm gonna try that see if it works
right try on that hat see if it works it
works great now i know every time i go
to mexican i've got this sort of go-to
thing that's really yummy and i like it
and it works with my program so it's
like that understanding and doing things
that are right for you
in your life
very important work that you used around
that that i liked a lot was fluidity and
you talked about how part of what makes
your program work so effectively is
there's just a fluidity and you were
saying that i've never seen anyone ever
stick to a diet where they had to give
up their favorite food yeah and i
thought that was pretty interesting how
do you work with people to incorporate
that when you know it's you have a
slight number system but it's really
pretty light very light very light you
know coming out of the weight watchers
world right which is a low fat almost no
fat diet and i started to really
disagree with it about five years ago
and i'm trying to to help the weight
watchers members who've been stuck in
this mentality
sort of gently teach them about
moving into high-fat foods and not
fearing them because you know i get to
work with these people
face to face
this is real like people are stuck in
the 80s i'm not kidding like they're
stuck and they're like where are my
snackwells man like i'm like
you shouldn't be eating that like how do
i move you so yeah this is a very gentle
movement um and fluidity and in eating
the things you love and learning to
manage the things you love
is the key like that is like for me i
drink wine like i drink wine and yes
i've i've definitely fallen on my face
with that literally more than you know
i've had my issues learning to manage it
but i came up with a personal system
that really works right like i don't
have it in the house before i can have a
glass of wine i have to have a glass of
seltzer in between every glass of wine i
have to have a glass of seltzer that
spreads out my drinks now that's
habitual if pizza is your thing if you
make it taboo over here it's now bad
right what do we what happens when
something's bad and we feel guilty or
shameful over eating it we're going to
highlight that reward system we're going
to go overboard with it so i'm trying to
get people to say like okay
i am going to look at my week and on
friday night we are going out for pizza
and i'm going to have it but i'm going
to have a salad first right i'm gonna do
some behavior i'm gonna shift some
behavior around that food to see how
that impacts me
i may still fail not fail it's a
terrible word but i may still not do as
well as i was hoping i would like my
mimosa day
but
i learned something and i i'm gonna keep
chipping away at this thing that has
become something
bigger than food right that is now
bigger that pizza is now not just pizza
it's like it means so much more so
you've got to kind of chip away at that
and try different behavior around it i
love that you stopped yourself from
saying the word fail yeah i was like
that's so strong though that words
matter they do um talk a little bit
about that like how
do you help people begin to change the
language of how they refer to themselves
or how they think about food and how
important the actual words are
it's critical i mean i just think again
like the way i would speak to my sister
for for example who i love dearly if she
came to me and said like i did i went
out for pizza and i wouldn't ever speak
to her like you're such a failure why'd
you do that you know so
it's a best friend a sister a ch
even a child like how would i this funny
thing in the book of like
you know as your kids learn to walk
right they like kind of pull themselves
up on a coffee table and they take a
tenuous step that would be like me
walking over and shoving that kid down
and saying
well you didn't walk across the room so
down with you right that's that's the
way we treat ourselves and this is the
other thing every action that we take
has a positive intention right so even a
drug addict taking heroin is just doing
it because they're
they want to feel better right than they
do at that moment
same thing with food you know you're
beating yourself up all day you're
getting a pretty powerful hit of
serotonin every time you eat so you're
not
you're not dumb
you're pretty smart you're making
yourself feel better when you can look
at yourself from that lens and say like
oh
i'm so nice to me i love me oh i was all
that time with those 65 pounds i was i
was trying to make myself better
i just was doing it in the wrong way
that kind of language towards yourself
is a total change
you can actually progress from that spot
of loving yourself enough to say like
yeah i don't like the result that i was
getting going down this road i think i
want to try keto great go ahead try it
let's work let's work through keto and
see how that feels for you see if that
works for you
if it doesn't let's see what pieces you
picked up like oh i can add avocado to
absolutely everything and it's delicious
so you're very clear in the book that
there's no one-size-fits-all approach
but you have a couple sort of broad
stroke things that
you would say i think most people if not
everybody would benefit from what are
those sort of broad strokes
so target 100 is based around the number
is sort of a metaphor for you being your
right like not mine yours
as i say the book is filled with
worksheets for you to kind of chisel
down on a lot of what we've been talking
about but it's built on six pillars so
one would be nutrition number one would
be that sort of
looking at
reducing carbohydrates and again it's a
gentle movement away from processed
foods into about a hundred grams of
carbs a day which is by no means a low
carb diet it's you know atkins is 50
keto is 20 25 like you're not low carb
but it's giving you just enough of a
push to say let me look at this meal and
see what i can do to judge it into
higher protein a little bit more healthy
fat and lots more vegetables the i think
the pillar that blows people's minds the
most is that hydration
i'm asking you to get 100 ounces of
water in in a day which to me is nothing
at this point i'm like oh yeah i'd blow
through that no problem
most people 75 of america is walking
around critically dehydrated like
critically dehydrated so none of their
systems we're we're
water with our brain and our heart being
up to 78 water your brain and your heart
are your two metabolic
powerhouses so if those are completely
empty low on gas not functioning you're
not going to feel your best you're going
to mistake thirst for hunger so
hydration is huge
um
movement so i separate movement and
exercise as two pillars people are often
like i don't understand right i'm trying
to get people to understand that we are
hunter gatherers we need regular just
movement walking doing you know the
dishes doing the laundry
gardening those kinds of things are
essential for our
bodies
so i'm trying to get people to add a
hundred minutes of movement to their
week so that could be you know five
twenty minute walks with friends walk
breaks i i often counsel clients to get
a headset and when they have calls i
have them trigger themselves to stand up
until it becomes a habit where every
time the phone rings they stand up and
they pace during their calls because we
need to not be in this position for so
many hours a day when we have restricted
blood flow to the legs we have a lower
heart rate things that don't help us so
movement exercise is just a hundred
minutes of exercise again i'm coming
from a gentle move from maybe no
exercise into a hundred minutes in a
week now that could be just three
30 35 minute sessions during the week of
you know getting that heart rate pumping
and starting to stress the muscle you
know skeletal system um you know gently
starting that and then pressing further
with that once that becomes your habit
and
stress
so 100 minutes of stress relieving
exercises so that could be learning to
meditate for 10 you know 10 15 minutes a
day
that could be getting massage that could
be even yoga some restorative yoga that
relieves stress it could be reading or
knitting people just don't understand
the stress response in our body
and we are in a horrible environment at
this point right they they estimate even
just the lighting in most of the large
you know big box stores
is so stressful to our system that we
are in a huge fight like going to costco
fight or flight the entire time like the
just that
particular type of lighting so in the
fight-or-flight scenario
very simply your body is grabbing a tiny
bit of fat to power your run
away from whatever danger
is coming your way once your body grabs
that tiny little bit of fat
your entire system says oh boy we're
losing our body fat we got to make her
hungrier so she eats more so we can
restore that body fat so that we're safe
if the nuclear winter comes right so
your entire system if we don't learn to
to kind of quell the stress response
we're going to keep being driven to
overeat driven to overeat driven towards
high fat high salt high sugar foods
because those are the ones that release
the serotonin and get the stress down so
stress is a big piece and sleep which i
think is
again another place that most people
especially you know working one-to-one
with people
we're like a mess and that is when we
detox that is when our bodies kind of
restore and get ready and renew and um
if you miss sleep you're going to be
hungrier you're going to have about a 30
gap
between this ghrelin and leptin right so
ghrelin tells you to go eat leptin tells
you to stop eat
we got a big gap there and ghrelin is
winning when you haven't had enough
sleep so
those are the pillars that i'm really
trying to get people to think about i
was trying to expand the conversation
right so all the other diet companies
are really just talking food that's all
you hear here's your here's your food
system like
oh my god like that's like one little
tiny piece i find it really interesting
that you're also super involved in like
wearables and technology and stuff like
that
what are things you think people should
be tracking
what are wearables or i know you've got
this really interesting scale that you
got involved with which is fascinating
like what are some of the the cutting
edge technology things that people could
do to further themselves in this journey
yeah i've become really passionate about
technology because when you're trying to
break habits technology can be that
great trigger right your phone can
trigger new habits
so i you know at the very
smallest level you don't have to buy
anything your phone is tracking your
steps for you as long as you have it on
you i think tracking your steps even for
a short amount of time is so important
right so we go back to that movement
pillar the majority of people are
walking between three and five thousand
steps in a day which is unbelievably low
unbelievably low right that's just like
almost not moving at all and i give like
a whole outline of a woman in the in the
book of like her day and she was like no
i'm so busy i'm oh my god no i'm on my
feet all day when we really tracked it
she she was on her feet for like 12
minutes because she's in the yeah she's
busy she doesn't have five minutes to
herself but she's jumping from one thing
to the train she sits on the train then
she goes to the office then she sits at
the office and she comes home she drives
her kids for two and a half hours
so people are busy but they're not
moving so i think understanding that
you're not moving even though you think
you are what's the number of steps you
think people should aim for we aim for
10 000
secretly i'd love 12. i mean we are
we're meant to be moving and there's so
many as i say little ways that you can
get this in but again creating habits
around it you know i have so many people
who just you know it's just their habit
to jump in the car and drive to the
train even though the train's only 0.5
of a mile and so we you know kind of
working on like that baby steps right we
kind of start to leave the house 10
minutes early you know like getting you
to think like okay this is a
non-negotiable i'm going to do this or
i'm going to get out one train stop
early or whatever it is um so secretly
uh
about twelve thousand i think tracking
your sleep is fascinating
it's really important because i think
again people are like no i'm good
and then they realize like that these
little things are getting in their way
you know they're getting on their phone
right before they go to bed and they're
getting wrapped up in social media and
then they're getting stressed out
because she's doing better than me at
work and i'm falling apart and oh my god
and then they don't fall asleep or the
quality of their sleep isn't good so
understanding that and changing i would
say like the two biggest places i work
with people are their night time and
their morning time habits
right so we we look at that and say we
leave that
phone downstairs at 10 and we go
upstairs and there's just no more
getting on
to social media or something like that
can be like this very impactful thing
again i didn't talk to you about food we
just moved your phone you know like and
that impacted the way you ate the next
day
so um tracking that uh
i think really interestingly um
i think you know tracking your exercise
and some of these new uh
these new programs that are emerging
things like an orange theory where
they're helping you to understand
and tracking you know how many times
you're showing up there
you know what is your heart rate and
what is your max heart rate and they're
helping you in a really user friendly
way to understand
things like peloton i mean changing the
world
to be able to gamify and make a
community
in your own home i mean this is what i
saw worked at weight watchers this is
this is community support and
accountability
um i think food tracking is completely
unnecessary and is not realistic i i you
know i came from 12 years at weight
watchers where their number one thing is
you have to track your food
that wasn't one person like barely like
one person did that because it's simply
just not realistic
it's very difficult it's very you know
you're like how much how many beans were
in that salad i'm not sure so there's a
lot of guesstimating and i think
guesstimating throws people off and
makes them feel like they're not doing a
good job so they quit it anyway
but
just knowing what you're eating and
looking at portions and changing your
plate size for me
way more impactful than ever counting
your calories in some way shape or form
so i would say don't don't worry about
that i encourage people to weigh
themselves on a scale that's tracking
more than just your weight so body fat
lean mass inflammation any you know
scale that will give you some more
metrics so that as you're losing weight
because it will become moments where the
skill goes nowhere but you're dropping
body fat right as we add exercise and
things like that i used to see this at
weight watchers all the time someone
would come in and they'd say
so excited i added exercise this week
i'm going to really lose weight and they
would not lose weight because they're
inflamed of course and
that would throw them so badly that they
would then quit because they're like wow
so i i did everything right plus added
exercise i guess this doesn't work
i need people to understand their
physiological body a little bit better
and that you know when you add exercise
you're in an injury state and your body
will rush fluid around those injuries
and you will appear to have gained
weight on a traditional scale but you
will see begin to see okay oh the
inflammation of the water content in my
body is high right now but my lean mass
is getting higher so i'm doing something
right so you start to see new ways of
just a scale is is a really poor tool i
have people weigh in i'll do like a 30
day weigh-in challenge and we track that
weight because i want them to see that
you know you can do everything right in
a week
but during the course of the week you're
going to be all over the place we hope
that by the end of the week we're
somewhere in a downward trajectory
seeing a new low at some point during
the week it could be on tuesday it could
be on thursday don't know
right so you need to be understanding
that
day in and day out fluctuations can't be
your reason that this isn't working
because this is a very complex machine
so really getting to know it so i press
people to
to get to know it really really well how
does your body lose weight pretty much
everyone i've ever worked with they have
their own pattern right of one woman she
is awesome and she's just killing it
she's doing all these great behaviors
and she's really do it and she just
holds sight and then all of a sudden
like two weeks later she'll drop like
four pounds out of nowhere but that's
her pattern that's the way her body lets
go of weight so everyone really has
different patterns and
styles in which their body becomes
feeling safe enough to let go of some
weight you mentioned the scale it's
called the shape a scale
and i've been consulting for them
because
they have a scale that's that doesn't
have any numbers you never see a number
because those numbers as i said before
can throw people so now when you step on
the scale you simply are given a color
in a gradation to let you know if you're
moving in the right direction or if
you're not moving in the right direction
and you're given a chronological age to
let you know like what your health and
it's reading seven different indicators
when you step on
so you you can get over your fear of the
scale and get into the habit of stepping
on something every morning because what
we now know is just the act of stepping
on a square on the floor in it actually
informs your behavior for the rest of
the day how crazy is that it's because
you said to yourself i care enough
to just to just do this for me and i
think that that says well why don't i
have a good breakfast
i got on the scale why don't i have a
good breakfast so if those numbers make
you crazy this scale i think is a really
lovely and gentle way to get into the
habit of stepping on something and then
you have the opportunity to kind of flip
over and see those numbers if you become
ready you'll see your entire history and
you'll be able to kind of like
loving gentle again loving and gentle
move into this place that has a much
better dialogue technology is going to
be that thing that turns the tide on
this the between you know take a peloton
type technology where you're creating
community
and you can do this right from your home
you can meet people across the world you
can see your stats you can have all of
this recorded between that and you know
now then
you if you want to you can have your
groceries delivered online so you don't
have to go to the grocery store and get
tempted by all the things in the aisles
and you just have it you know all
delivered to you technology is going to
be a great um a great game changer as we
continue to go forward and begin to kind
of collate it into one place right now
it's very disparate i think but there's
going to become this moment where it all
comes together and that's where i want
to be so yeah i totally agree yeah all
right before i ask my last question tell
these guys where they can find you
online yes so you can find me at liz
josephsburg on all social platforms
and we have a great website for target
100 as well where you know my goal with
target 100 was not to keep this a secret
that's why the entire formula is on the
cover of this book my goal in life is to
help people so
i have a website designated where all of
the rules the program are there with
videos from me and some of the
worksheets are there where you can just
kind of like go and check this out and
see what it's all about so
target100program.com
liz josephsberg on all of the social
channels as well love it all right my
last question what's one change that
people could make that would have the
biggest impact on their health
hydration
yeah
if you just said i'm gonna start
drinking more water today the impact on
your health would be incredible as i say
that's the one that blows people's minds
you will feel better you will have more
energy your skin hair nails everything
will be better
so